Australian Comedians Versus A Terrifying & Overwhelming World

It can sometimes feel like the world’s an overwhelming and terrifying dumpster fire. The oceans are rising, Brexit happened, and the doomsday clock is 100 seconds from midnight. Worst of all, The Ferals hasn’t had a new season since 1995.

Sami Shah believes there are a tonne of issues that are bewildering to the general public. “There’s no shortage of them, I mean depending on who you are,” he says. “If you’re a person of colour, then it’s about the rise of the far-right with their extreme racism. If you’re a white, middle-aged rich guy, then it’s the fact that all of a sudden you feel like you can’t say the N-word.”

However, Shah thinks that not every societal concern is legitimate. “Some of them are real, like the persecution of minorities or the mistreatment of women. Some of them are bullshit, like everything basically One Nation or Pauline Hanson [believe].”

Becky Lucas reckons that there are existential terrors that additionally stress us all out. She says, “Life in general’s pretty terrifying... I’m constantly gripped by panic that I’m going to die.”

But in such a frightening world, what role does comedy play? Well, Shah feels like comedy's responsibility isn’t to solve or comment on the big issues. “My goal as a comedian is to make people laugh. It’s not to give a TED Talk. It’s not to inspire them to change the world or anything. It’s just to make them laugh.” 

Lucas agrees that stand-up doesn’t have to address the complicated and scary parts of life. “People always come to comedians for big, big answers," she jokes. "But I don’t know, I don’t know anything: that’s why I’m a comedian. There’s a very low bar to get into this.”

Comedy might not have to explore those parts of life, but they do still pop up in Shah’s work: “I think about politics a lot, I think about race a lot, I think about culture a lot... So that comes out in my comedy whether I want it to or not. It’s not something that I set out to write, but it’ll always make its way in.” 

On the other hand, Lucas doesn’t usually broach political topics in her stand-up. She says most people see it every day on Twitter or on their Facebook feed. “Now Nike’s like, ‘Feminism!’ Everyone talks about this shit now,” she notes. “So for me, I feel like if I was to get on stage and talk about it, everyone would be like, ‘Yeah, we’ve already heard it.’”

Lucas also doesn’t like cracking jokes when she’s legitimately scared of a subject. “Sometimes I just want to be earnest about that stuff. I think it’s kind of ok to have a serious conversation about that stuff. And the things I find naturally funny, I like to joke about. So for me, I think I’d be forcing it a bit if I was trying to joke about nuclear war.”

But does an audience benefit if a comedian jokes about climate change or Scott Morrison? Well, Shah feels like it can provide them with a sense of catharsis. However, he also says that this makes a political joke no different to any other gag in his stand-up. “A lot of my stand-up style is about the process of getting married," he says, "and how difficult weddings are to organise and things like that. The laughs I get from that are just as cathartic as the laughs I get from something more political.”

Lucas believes that joking about serious issues doesn’t always provide that catharsis. It can sometimes make the general public feel awkward. “Who would have thought that the weather is now the edgy topic?” she says. “You mention anything like fires or bushfires or whatever [and] audiences get so uncomfy about it.”

Shah too has found that some audiences are so uptight about specific issues that it negatively impacts his stand-up. “You talk about race as a person of colour, and they just find it too uncomfortable to deal with the context of the conversation, what it might say about them, and their attitudes. It kind of belies a certain lack of honesty,” he says.

And sometimes people aren’t just uncomfortable, they can become outright hostile. Shah has found that discussing political issues has occasionally resulted in altercations with punters. “I used to talk about refugee issues a lot, particularly during the early Abbott years,” says Shah. “I would talk about refugee rights and refugee issues. And every now and then there’d be someone in the audience who be like, ‘Nah! That’s bullshit!’ And then you’d get into a debate with them.”

There are times when the 2020 world feels terrifying and overwhelming. In fact, it can frequently feel like things are worse than ever before. But is that actually the case, or has the planet always been this daunting? Well, Lucas isn’t quite sure, but she feels like it’s certainly not a new phenomenon. “Imagine the feeling of every husband going off and dying in a war,” she says. “That would have felt pretty 'end of days'. And then life keeps going. At the moment it definitely feels like this is pretty serious. But I just don’t know.”

Likewise, Shah admits that the world has an end-times vibe, but he acknowledges that our always-online culture is affecting his perspective. “We have 24-hour news channels, we have the internet, we have the real-time repercussions of news and information... And it gives you a level of anxiety.”

But whether this apocalyptic feeling is new or not, whether we deal with these problems earnestly or through comedy, there is always time for a joke. “It’s good to just go and have a laugh,” says Lucas. And is there any statement that’s somehow less daunting than that?